Title: The Six Greatest Breakthroughs in UX History
Context: We user experience professionals stand on the shoulders of UX giants.
Synopsis: Gauguin once asked “Whence Come We? What Are We? Whither Go We?” Not sure what that has to do with anything but hey, you should read this dandy little article about the seminal moments in user experience over the past oh, 20 years or so. We forget just how revolutionary some of the ideas we take for granted today were back when they were first introduced. Digital technology, at it’s base level, was – and still is – about connecting people with the things they want; information, content, media and other people. The real revolution came when the complex systems that were built around these transactions were simplified so that anyone and everyone could partake of these post-technology miracles. User experience really began to matter when the masses cried out for their god given right to access the digital utopia, even if their motives were trite, nefarious or inexplicable to the participants themselves. So look back fondly my fellow UX’ers and remember from whence we came.
Best Bit: “Thank you Archie, Gopher, WebCrawler, Lycos, Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, MSN, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Google, Bing, and others for expanding our consciousness, saving us time and money, making us smarter, and settling every factual dispute we’re ever going to have – on the spot.”
via uxmag.com
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